


I was just hoping that these storm-filled skies would clear

by Chiomi



Series: Theophages [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Frottage, M/M, Magic, POV Alan Deaton, Pining, Slow Build, Spoilers through Season 3a
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 05:08:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1052871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiomi/pseuds/Chiomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alan raises the bottle in his hand, Claudia’s awful tea wine that she gave away as Christmas presents once the first bottle of the batch was terrible.</p><p>It’s the first time he and John have been alone in years. John doesn’t say anything: his face just twists at the sight of the bottle, and he waves Alan over.</p><p>They drink the whole thing straight from the bottle, staring out over Claudia’s garden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I was just hoping that these storm-filled skies would clear

**Author's Note:**

> The magic system was taken, and then liberally adapted, from [Jesse's](http://jumpingjacktrash.tumblr.com/) amazing [book](http://www.amazon.com/The-God-Eaters-Jesse-Hajicek/dp/1847288650) [_The God Eaters_](http://gomichan.livejournal.com/274098.html). Thank you for explaining more how the system worked, and I'm sorry?
> 
> Somehow 'rare pair november' turned into 'people being bad at feelings.'
> 
> Meanings for flowers used came from [here](https://archive.org/stream/languageofflower00gree#page/n9/mode/2up).
> 
> Much thanks to [Ereborne](http://ereborne.tumblr.com/), [ADM](http://adigitalmagician.tumblr.com), and [AB](http://wolftraps.tumblr.com) for betaing along the way.

Alan knows that John Stilinski always trod a very fine line of not-knowing: he’d never known that Alan and Claudia had studied magic at their study sessions, not even when they came home smelling of ozone. Sometimes, when things had gone particularly well, they’d go home to him and Claudia would put on AC/DC and make out with John aggressively on the couch. Claudia would strip off her shirt, throw it carelessly so it usually snagged on something on the way to the floor, and Alan - well, Alan never cleared out faster than he wanted to.

Claudia usually met his eyes, then, hers wild and happy and nearly beta-gold around dilated pupils.

Some days, Alan thought that he could almost see John actively not knowing he was there: not sending Alan away, not inviting him closer. Preserving their balance with his willful ignorance. He wasn’t ever sure if he loved or hated him for it, and then feelings didn’t matter because he could just watch lithe bodies the color of tea with too much milk writhe against each other. He never stayed: his door was always firmly closed by the time John got up to get Claudia water.

When they all finished undergrad, it was - well, Alan was going to vet school in San Diego, and Claudia had a job at a museum in the town where John had grown up, and John himself had applied to transfer to the local Sheriff’s department. They were very domestic, and Alan had harboured uncharitable thoughts about pretty white straight people settling down like a fairy tale. Those hadn’t lasted, of course, not in the face of working those last few times with Claudia, not in the face of John’ quiet steady gaze.

Alan loved them both fiercely, and couldn’t begrudge them their happiness, however they found it.

The last time - they both know it’s the last time - he and Claudia go to the woods together, it’s late in August. The heat hangs heavy, and carries knowledge with more certainty than soundwaves can convey. He and Claudia have sex in the sun and do spells for protection and luck for themselves and John, and they aren’t wholly separate tasks. After, the air smells of thunderstorms and crushed lilacs, and he knows he won’t see her again for years.

*

By the time he sees her again, she’s dying. Of course. Claudia always wanted a family, and it’s been nearly ten years since he last saw her. She must have thought she’d get longer, though, before her knobby-kneed kid came into his appetite.

She dies two days later. Alan’s signing the papers to take over the vet clinic in town. He finds out belatedly that John was on a call, and Claudia’s kid was all alone when it happened.

He finds out the kid is eight.

He finds out a lot of things, really, because it’s a small town and apparently no one likes the vet set up adjacent to the animal shelter. The receptionist fits all the gossip of a full length workday in the time before the elementary school gets out, and the PTA just adds to what she picks up from clients.

Not all the things he finds out can be allowed to matter, no matter how hollowed-out he feels.

He goes to the funeral, and it’s the first time he’s seen John in person in years. They clasp hands wordlessly, and Alan leaves him to grieve with his son. At the reception - small, tasteful, nothing like what she’d have wanted ten years ago - he meets Talia Hale, who’s in the market for a new Emissary.

They leave, and let blood, and Alan can feel awareness rolling out from him and pooling at the edges of the territory and flowing back carrying power and obligation. He goes home feeling both unbalanced and more grounded than he’s ever been.

A lot of his stuff is still in boxes, because it’s been eventful since he moved in -- shit, two months ago. He has to go through a few of them before he finds what he was looking for, and then he gets in his new, practical vehicle with the high safety rating and room in the back to carry bulk pet food.

He parks a couple houses down from the Stilinski house. He knows which one it is, because it couldn’t be anything else. Besides: there’s rosemary by the front steps. Claudia had never loved gardening for gardening’s sake, not like their mentor had, but she’d come to terms with the fact that magic is getting your hands dirty. Alan’s willing to bet there’s a herb garden out back, and loops around to the side to look.

It’s there and blooming, lavender and comfrey and mint and thyme. John is sitting on the steps to the back porch, elbows propped on his knees and hands clasped together. He looks over to Alan and recognizes him fast enough that Alan can’t parse the expression that came before: something like loss, certainly.

Alan raises the bottle in his hand, Claudia’s awful tea wine that she gave away as Christmas presents once the first bottle of the batch was terrible.

It’s the first time he and John have been alone in years. John doesn’t say anything: his face just twists at the sight of the bottle, and he waves Alan over.

They drink the whole thing straight from the bottle, staring out over Claudia’s garden. It still tastes like rot.

*

The Hales burn to death. Alan’s investigation never quite overlaps with John’s, but when he sees him in passing his eyes are always bloodshot, like he hasn’t been sleeping in a long time.

Claudia was always better at all of this than Alan.

Alan cuts down the nemeton himself, in rage and grief and penance, and then goes back to work and is scrupulously calm to all his clients.

*

The Sheriff’s department brings their canine units in to Alan’s clinic, and Claudia’s kid is in there all the time when Alan hires a kid who turns out to be his best friend, but John never spends time there he doesn’t have to. They barely speak, and there’s no sign in his behavior that they used to be fast friends.

Alan does his best to respect that distance, and over time it gets easier. John’s always been considering and deliberate, but never callous. Alan doesn’t really know this stranger. Can’t. He’s just alone in a strange city with ghosts, because all his good friends are dead. He considers, when he’s feeling lonely, eradicating the discount for the Sheriff’s department, see how John likes being cut out, but that’s incredibly stupid from a business standpoint.

There’s a mutilated deer, and Alan has to notify Laura, though he’s lost all other right to speak to her. He tells her it’s a trap, that it’s just meant as bait, that she should stay away. He does so with no expectation that she’ll listen, because he failed her family.

Sure enough, she shows up, then shows up dead.

John brings him pictures of things, and wants an idea of what kind of animal could have done it. It’s werewolf, obviously werewolf, and he has a feeling John knows that underneath his not-knowing. He wrinkles his forehead adorably and says some things Alan can parse just fine as a command to take care of it before mundane people find out.

Alan’s assistant turns out to be turned, and it’s - well, you can’t run forever. Claudia’s kid isn’t showing up as often, but when he does he’s gone jagged at the edges, wanting to snag on any piece of knowledge or power and draw it in. Alan keeps himself contained, and doesn’t let on he knows anything. If Claudia didn’t tell her kid, it’s because she didn’t want him to know, and these ragged edges can go dormant, might let him lead a normal life if he doesn’t end up thoroughly enmeshed in werewolves.

When Derek Hale ties him to a chair, Alan goes with it. The beating’s the least he deserves for the way he failed the Hales, the way he’s failing Claudia by letting her son turn into a stormfront without any guidance. He keeps his secrets and takes his lumps, and it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.

At the school, he recognizes the root pattern of the mad werewolf, and Peter tries to kill him for the knowledge. Alan’s been carrying rowan ash for weeks, though, and makes himself an impenetrable wall of dust.

Peter comes to the clinic wearing his human mask, and seems surprised that he has no power there. Alan supposes it makes sense: Emissaries are supposed to keep their own counsel, and Alan certainly never had a chance to show the Hales what he could do.

The seasons turn. Even in Northern California the cycle of the year carries heavy weight, and it’s fitting that the Hunger Moon sees Peter’s demise.

*

As it wanes, Alan leaves his vet tech in charge and makes his monthly trip to the Hale graves. It’s coincidence or fate - same thing, really - that takes him there while Stiles is there. He’s standing over Talia Hale’s grave looking shell-shocked, and Talia’s pattern is gone.

Talia hadn’t just been an alpha. She’d been known, and respected, and almost a celebrity because she was powerful, and her ghost was powerful because of her celebrity. Not a whole ghost, technically: Alan’s never failed quite so much that he’d let anyone become a ghost. But Talia’s pattern had lingered, making this corner of the graveyard a little quieter, a little eerier. That’s gone, now, and Stiles’ edges are brighter and his pattern thornier. He looks hungry.

Alan tucks the edges of himself in more closely, because his only advantage is experience. “Did you know the Hales, Stiles?”

“No,” he says, then pauses. “Though it feels like I did, sometimes.”

Alan nods, because he can’t say anything: his throat is closed. Claudia’s pattern would give him more knowledge of the pack she’d been tied to. Now that he’s absorbed Talia, too, he might as well have grown up around them. He’s going to have to train him somehow, at least enough to know what he is, or Alan will fall and be lost to his appetite.

It’s not an easy thing to broach, and there are other things afoot. The kanima’s a grotesque unnatural thing, though, and he can neither go near it nor let it be. He can’t go near it because in its natural state it kills murderers, and too few of his strengths are physical. With what went into the Morales Alpha’s labour and keeping her twins alive earlier in the week, his non-physical strengths are nowhere near enough to instill confidence that he’d come back alive, either.

He explains rowan as plainly as possible, and in as little detail as he can get away with. It’s important to emphasize that trying to hold a whole perimeter yourself is stupid: that’s why druids use tools. All you have to be is a spark. Or, well, to hold a warehouse, a very large spark. But the kid doesn’t need to know that. It’s probably safer if he doesn’t know the full extent of what he can do just yet. Alan knows the kid doesn’t like him much, and if he knows what he can do before he likes him, he might just decide to eat him.

Alan doesn’t like trepidation like this, and hates himself for cowardice. His fear feels justified, though, because he remembers what it was like at first, remembers the ravening that had him and Maren nearly unraveling their mother before their grandmother stepped in. He remembers, and he can see for himself. If the shapes they made were physical, Alan would be cirrocumulus and Stiles would be cumulonimbus. Alan can see the storm brewing, and the knowledge that he won’t survive it if other measures aren’t taken is far more than paranoia.

He packs up and goes home. Scott knows how to find him if things go wrong, but it’s not a horrible plan, and they’re all super-powered.

John is on his doorstep not an hour after he gets home. He’s in a T-shirt and plaid and jeans, and looks smaller than he does in uniform. He holds up a bottle of whiskey in greeting when Alan opens the door. “You know, you’re almost the only person I know in this town that I don’t know through the department.”

“Come in,” Alan says. He leads John back to the kitchen and gets glasses, because they’re functional adults and even if their only non-work conversation in the last seventeen years has been over alcohol, they can at least pretend to be civilized.

John doesn’t bother with fingers, just fills the glasses vaguely half-full and downs his in one go and fills it again. “I’m on ‘extended leave.’ You know why, right?”

‘Why’ has weight and depth it shouldn’t, but then Alan has always known John is good at his job. “Stiles and the Whittemore boy.”

John looks down at his glass, and some of the tension leaches out of him, like he doesn’t have the will to keep it in. “Doesn’t help that I haven’t been able to make any progress on the murders, but when your kid kidnaps another kid, especially when his parents are a lawyer and the president of the town council -”

“He’s a good kid,” Alan says quietly.

John looks at him. Alan looks back, but it’s hard. He’s faced down bulls with infections and enraged werewolves, but sometimes scar tissue stays a point of weakness. When John was in uniform, was in his office, it was different. Here at home Alan has no armor. He looks away first.

They kill most of the bottle between them, and talk about Claudia. They stay on separate seats, and don’t touch.

In the morning, the pain of that conversation is more than eclipsed by the pain of a hangover. He hasn’t drunk that much in years.

The living room is empty, but the blanket he’d given John is folded neatly over the spare pillow. Alan puts it away, and makes coffee, and goes to work.

By the time the hangover’s worn off, he feels better than he has in over a decade. Even drunken catharsis is cleansing.

John doesn’t come over again. Alan almost doesn’t notice, because the Hales need family therapy in the worst way.

Alan tracks down the poisoned, crippled Gerard Argent with his sister’s help. He has to leave the clinic in the tech’s hands more than he wants, but there are -- things. Things he has to do. When he’s done Gerard is harmless, or at least limited to his words, and still ill. Maren strips all memory of them and they dump Gerard, unconscious, in the Argents’ backyard.

John only comes into the clinic once, in the next few months, and it’s with one of the canine unit who might have eaten something suspicious. Alan thinks he lingers, just a little, but dismisses it as wishful thinking. His old friend got his job back, got his life back. Good. That’s as far as that sentiment needs to go. He’s a vet with a busy practice and time-consuming extracurriculars.

The summer’s almost normal, with Scott on a self-improvement kick and the Hales keeping to themselves. The alpha pack are around, of course, and Alan suspects that they’ll have done something to Derek, but Derek hasn’t asked for help. Theoretically he’s not breaking his word to Talia if Derek never asks. The theory doesn’t make him feel less like a coward.

Scott goes back to being the reliable kid he hired, happy to stay late to check on the animals who are overnighting. He’s just able to cart in heavy supplies from the car without assistance or breaking a sweat, now.

The tech’s working longer hours, too. Which is why, when he gets a call from an unknown number on the office phone one afternoon, he’s free enough to answer it himself.

“Beacon Hills Animal Clinic, Alan Deaton speaking, how can I help you?”

“Alan?”

It’s John, and Alan’s heart starts to thud like distant drums. He wouldn’t be calling from anywhere but his office line if this were usual. “What’s wrong?”

“They tossed his room and left flowers on the bed. The rosemary out front grew a foot. Get here.”

“Fifteen minutes.” Alan puts down the phone and leaves his office. He finds the tech and tells him to go over appointments and call to reschedule anything he can’t do on his own, and leaves before he sees Scott, who’d wonder at the elevated heartbeat Alan can’t seem to control.

He drives stupidly fast, and makes it in ten minutes. John meets him outside, and his eyes are snapping lightning. “You and Claudia - this is a you thing. Take a look, and if it’s not, I’m calling the whole department in.”

Alan nods, and follows him up to what can only be Stiles’ room. There are posters on the walls, a computer on the desk, and what looks like the entire contents of the dresser and closet strewn over the floor. The only evidence that this isn’t the usual state of affairs is the displaced mattress, John’ worried look, and the flowers laid neatly on the bed: garden nasturtium and belladonna. “Don’t call the department,” he says immediately.

John lets out a long breath. “It’s a you thing, then?”

“The flowers mean war trophy and silence.” Alan leans hard on his other senses, and yes, it’s definitely there: the fading presence of more than one werewolf, the more recent presence of more than one theophage, and swirls of violence. He picks at the impressions, trying to get an imprint of the pattern as a whole.

When he blinks, sure of his hold, John is holding a duffel bag. “Can you track him?”

Alan nods. John nods in return. “Get in the car, then.”

John drives and Alan navigates. He hopes they catch up soon. How far ahead can they even have gotten? They have to have been quasi-local to be able to sense Stiles at all. They’ve been driving half an hour when Alan’s senses waver and he almost loses the thread. “They’re gaining.”

“Yeah, well, they’re on the Interstate, aren’t they,” he says grimly. “North or south?”

“South.”

John guns it. They’re going 90, and the roads aren’t really built for it, but they’re on the interstate soon enough, heading down towards Los Angeles. They follow Alan’s feeling east, and that feels wrong on too many levels. It makes it federal, too.

When they hit the New Mexico border, John says, “Tell me why I shouldn’t call the feds.”

Alan’s fading. He hasn’t - Maren’s snide comments about retirement hadn’t been completely off-base. Being a veterinarian doesn’t take this much energy very often, and he hasn’t had to hold something this long in years. “You know why,” he says tiredly. Then, because he’s tired, he lets slip, “I never knew you knew.”

John makes a soft noise, not quite a scoff but clear dismissal nonetheless. “I couldn’t ever let it cloud work, and I don’t have any affinity for it, not like you or Claudia. I can barely tell when magic’s being worked around me, so it was just simpler not to talk about it. But the murders - it’s -”

“Magic, yes, and taken care of. Most of those secrets aren’t mine.”

John nods, then his face hardens. “And you’re sure it’s unrelated to whoever took my son?”

“Yes,” Alan says instantly. “He’s like Claudia. They probably want to take him apart, and it’s easier with time.”

“Easier,” John repeats incredulously. “They kidnapped a cop’s kid across state lines.”

“He’s quite powerful,” Alan says, and tries to concentrate on figuring out where they are.

John lets almost three miles pass without comment. “Damn. I’d hoped - well. It doesn’t matter what I’d hoped. When we get him back, though, is this going to keep happening? Will he be safe?”

Alan tries to articulate an answer. Kidnapping’s always unusual, and there are more powerful people, and the Hale pack might help protect him if they’re told and if they don’t self-destruct soon. Stiles is only a bit of a danger to himself if he goes untrained, a little bit more if he gets training. With the alpha pack coming, he’ll be safer if he can defend himself but safer still if he’s kept far from Alan and the werewolves in town. The moment for an answer passes. Alan’s taken a few beats too long to consider. He owes John an answer anyway. “We can make sure these people are no longer a threat.”

They switch off driving somewhere in - somewhere on the fucking interstate. It’s got gas, and a bathroom, and coffee. Alan’s not really sure what state they’re in anymore, other than the pull is still forward. He’d fallen asleep while they were still in California, and it’s several hours later.

John is almost visibly coming down from adrenaline, because they’re not as young as they used to be, and the body can’t sustain that level of panic, not even for a missing child. John sleeps as Alan drives through the desert.

He wakes up around dawn, and Alan can feel that they’ve gained on the people who took Stiles. They might have stopped, even: Alan doesn’t know how much of a lead they’d had. When they stop to piss and get coffee, Alan slumps into the passenger seat. He’s starting to smell like day-old car, and his shirt is wrinkled. “Texas,” he says.

John nods, grim-faced, and starts driving.

The sky brightens with morning, then darkens with heavy clouds. They drive straight into the rain, and Alan gets a bad feeling. The storm looks to be localized, and nothing’s localized here: serious weather moves from the Gulf straight up to Ontario. The first lightning strike is what gives it away - there’s no thunder, and the sensation of tension in the air doesn’t bleed away.

“He’s in the eye of the storm,” Alan says, probably unnecessarily. They drive, and the compass needle pointing to Stiles’ captor swings more widely. They’re getting closer. Stiles’ captors must have arrived at their destination.

It’s not far - only another half hour - until they need to exit the interstate. Alan is reasonably convinced that these people are idiots, because they have home field advantage and yet they’re still locatable from the interstate, not lost on back roads.

Worse, they’re in an abandoned barn, which is basically the rural version of an abandoned warehouse, and why don’t people ever demolish anything? “In there,” he says, pointing, and John stops the car.

He opens the trunk and gets out his belt and does it up over his pants and the tail ends of his shirts, and then passes Alan another handgun. Alan stares at it a little helplessly, because the last time he handled a gun on his own was with John, at the range he took Alan and Claudia to way back in undergrad. But John’s doing something swift and competent, checking over his gun and then another one that subsequently gets strapped to his ankle.

Alan holds his pattern tight and close as they approach on foot, because there’s no point in one kind of stealth if he can’t maintain another. The doors are closed, and Alan can feel the beginning stages of someone pulling someone else’s pattern apart, unspooling it into bite-sized chunks. Everyone in there is more powerful than he is, and their only hope is that they won’t be good with bullets, or quick on the draw.

He looks at John, and he knows his face is calm, because he hasn’t slipped in years. But there must be something in the eyes, because John smiles wryly. His eyes look old and creased with worry, and Alan never noticed before, but it doesn’t feel like a new realization. He reaches over and grips the back of Alan’s head and brings him forward and kisses him - once, hard, over quickly.

When he lets go, Alan feels deeply off-kilter, but it doesn’t matter because they’re moving anyway. John throws open one of the doors and shouts, “Police! Nobody move.”

They move, of course, and one reaches to throw - he doesn’t get a chance, because John shoots him.

He’s probably seen Stiles, tied to a chair with blood on his face.

Outside, thunder rolls on and on at the sudden final release of energy, all the thunder that should have accompanied the earlier lightning. Alan levels a gun at the other man, who’s gone pale.

“You’re not supposed to - he ate our sister!”

“And eating him was supposed to get her back?”

John’s already moving to untie Stiles, leaving Alan to hold a gun on the other theophage. It’s a terrible idea, because he’d miss if it came to it.

“He’s never been out of California before,” John says viciously even as his hands are gentle on his son.

The man goes, if possible, even paler. He looks like fish-belly.

John gathers up his son, too tall to be carried in his arms and only barely conscious enough to stay upright, even supported, and says, “Take your brother. Cover it up, because I can make your lives Hell.”

Alan keeps the gun trained on the man as John takes Stiles towards the door in something that’s part drag and part assisted stumble. When they’re clear, he advises, “Stay out of Beacon Hills, and be wary of partial matches.”

He backs away, and is shaking in fading adrenaline by the time he gets to the car. John’s helping Stiles buckle into the back seat, so Alan just puts the gun carefully in the trunk and goes around to the passenger side. He falls into the seat heavily.

When John slides into the driver’s seat, he says, “We should get a hotel in Abilene, get back on the road in the morning.”

They don’t stop in Abilene, but drive until it’s time for a late-ish dinner and then they stop at the closest hotel off the interstate at the time, and it only makes sense for John to stay in one room with his almost-certainly-concussed son and Alan to stay in another. Okay, it doesn’t, and Alan resents it, much as he tries not to. He’s got medical training, even if it’s not human-specific. But they all make it through the night, Stiles without seizing and Alan without sleeping much.

Alan finally remembers to call his receptionist and tell her had to get out of town suddenly, but he should be back for Saturday clinic hours. He stretches carefully, loosening himself up, and goes downstairs to find both Stilinskis already at the complimentary breakfast.

“I figure we’ll hit the road, try to get back to California before we have to stop for the night, unless you need to push through for work?”

Alan smiles, though he knows it comes out tight. “I don’t need to go in until Saturday.”

When John goes for more coffee, Stiles leans close, and his eyes are clear and hard. “Why are you here?”

Alan spreads cream cheese very precisely on his bagel. “You might want to work on your situational awareness to prevent future kidnappings.”

John comes back, and Stiles sits up and smiles at his dad. “So I was pretty out of it, but how’d you guys get me out of there?”

John shoots a quelling look at Alan. “We incapacitated them.”

“And left them for the local police,” Alan finishes, and takes a bite of his bagel. He has no particular urge to admit to his part in murder.

They hit the road shortly after, all of them in spare shirts of John’s because he can pack fast. The drive back is different, and not just because there’s no urgency to it: Stiles can’t go a mile without noise of some sort, so they cycle through radio stations and he talks in the spaces where there’s only talk radio, and Alan finds out all about various supernatural YA books, because Stiles apparently considers them research, though he’s vague in front of his father on what they’re research for. It’s tempting to lay out some of the things they’ve been hiding from each other, but few enough of these secrets are Alan’s that he can’t justify it.

They hit evening traffic outside LA, and John’s frustration is visible in the way he clutches the steering wheel. They stop at a motel just past the city, one with a chain restaurant across the parking lot. Stiles is still dominating the conversation, still pretending that the whole kidnapping thing didn’t really happen. It’s almost nice, having a buffer. Alan figures Stiles thinks the kidnapping is werewolf-related and that’s why he hasn’t asked any questions. John shows no inclination to talk about it, even though Stiles’ lack of questions about ‘why him’ would normally be a huge red flag.

Well, it’s still a red flag. But they’re all three draped in so many that it gets lost.

Back in the motel, Alan goes through his stretches and then jerks off in the shower thinking about competent hands and quiet strength.

They get back to Beacon Hills midday, and go straight to the Stilinski house. When they all get out of the cruiser, John pauses beside it, and looks like he’s going to say something.

Alan - can’t, right now. He nods goodbye and gets in his own car and drives home. He showers and dresses in his own damn clothes and drives to the clinic to check in. There’s work to be done, and none of it involves making a fool out of himself over the town Sheriff.

*

The alpha pack settle in, and when a darach shows up it seems to only make them want to put down roots. The darach starts killing people, and Alan sighs and resigns himself to less sleep, because he’ll be spending his nights trying to identify them. Druids of any stripe don’t carry their energy on the outside like things that are inherently magic, and it makes them tricky. If it weren’t for the dead bodies, it would almost be a welcome distraction: John hasn’t spoken a word to him since they got back in town. Alan doesn’t feel comfortable hunting him down just to get rejected, so he doesn’t pursue it.

*

Alan hadn’t expected to be targeted, not least because he’s supposed to be the hunter in this scenario. There are only two theophages in town, and it’s not like they’re a traditional category. The fact that he’s been targeted along with a doctor is frankly goddamn ridiculous, because there are easier places to break into, and a whole hospital full of staff, and if the spell needs different kinds of healers there’s another vet in town who’s not so well-defended. Still, when the moths show up on the window, he makes a call. John won’t be able to get there fast enough, isn’t equipped, might not respond anyway. So he calls Scott, who’s going to be a hell of an alpha when he grows up.

Animals are his purview, but there are a lot of them, and none of them are functioning like animals. Alan goes down, and that’s all he knows for a while. When he starts coming around, it’s to searing pain in his obliques and breaths that are coming harder. He pulls himself up as best he can, but his muscles have not appreciated him dangling like this. Holding himself up at all is hard, not least because consciousness keeps trying to eel away from him.

He’s in a grove, somehow. No, he’s still in the vault, but trees and trees and leaves wandering around him. How long has he been down here? It can’t have been too long, because he’d be dead.

Scott arrives. Scott’s a good boy. Scott can’t get to him, and oh. Not a grove, but still surrounded in rowan.

John is there, and he’s a vivid shining thing in the darkness. He takes aim, and Alan isn’t sure if he’s going to be freed or put out of his misery, because trying to shoot him down is an impossible shot. Alan’s best chance is if Scott can come into himself and break the barrier, though that’s still a narrow possibility and distant.

He takes another laboured breath.

John takes the shot.

Alan is shocked to the core as he falls, as they get him out, as they take him to John’s cruiser. He can’t make himself stop staring. He’s spent enough time with people with guns to know an impossible shot, and enough time with miracles to recognize one. John doesn’t seem to want to let go of him when they get to the ER, but he can’t look him in the eye, either. They get him on a stretcher, because everything to do with breathing or moving his arms is still unpleasant.

John grips his shoulder hard and says quietly, “I have to go back out, but just - be okay, Alan?”

“Yeah,” he says, and it comes out breathier than he’d wanted, but that can be blamed on the whole nearly-killed thing.

John leaves. Alan, eventually, gets the good drugs, and then gets to give a statement to some deputy he doesn’t know.

*

There’s a lunar eclipse looming, a darach set to use it as leverage to murder a bunch of murderous alphas, and John’s slated to be sacrificed, and there’s a storm brewing off the coast that’s set to break records.

In short, everything is going to shit and Alan did not sign up for this.

It’s with a raw and tearing sense of inevitability that he proposes they sacrifice themselves willingly. He’s willing to propose almost anything that will guarantee that John lives.

They agree, of course. Alan’s glad, in a cold and terrified way, that Lydia is there. Alan was tied deep to - well, one of the core elements of Stiles’ pattern, but Lydia is immune and won’t be damaged when he has to latch on to her to come back.

They go under, and something shifts, and the water’s untouchable. Alan pulls back as soon as the temperature drops, and Isaac’s a werewolf, but Lydia’s hands are showing signs of frostbite by the time she pulls them out.

There’s no option but leaving them there. Alan pretends it’s normal and expected, and he can see Isaac buy the story.

John’s still missing, and Alan itches to drive out to the stump of the Nemeton and try to find him, but there are folds and folds of reality that pleat there, and Alan doesn’t have a hope in Hell of finding him without guidance.

Time is ticking away inevitably, but none of them leave. In the morning, Alan has to close off the back room and leave them there so he can deal with patients.

The wind shifts mid-afternoon, and Alan closes early.

The kids wake up, and they’re changed. Allison and Stiles look like modern vampires, all black and pallor, slow to warm even as Scott bounces back like the werewolf he is.

It’s a stupid plan. It’s such a stupid plan, but all Alan needs is for Stiles to go save his father. It needs to be Stiles, because no one else has the knowledge of the nemeton or the sheer raw power necessary.

Tonight might end with Deucalion as the alpha of Beacon Hills, or the darach triumphant. And those are obviously bad outcomes, but they’re not the worst outcome.

The storm stops abruptly enough that Alan’s sure something must have happened to Stiles. He clenches his jaw and keeps preparing. They need somewhere to fall back to, if it all goes horribly.

At the end of the night, it’s only Derek who comes by. Alan lets him in and lets him pace while he packs up some of the supplies he’d gotten out in his worry. “Cora and I are leaving,” he says abruptly. “Will you keep an eye on Peter?”

Alan stills. “I can do that. Are you coming back?”

Derek glances swiftly towards - well. Alan knows who lives in that direction because he glances in that direction, too, though probably not for the same reason.

Alan nods his understanding. “I’ll watch Peter to the best of my ability.”

Derek says, “Thank you,” and pauses, then slips out.

Alan sighs, and goes home to sleep.

*

His next supernaturally-adjacent visitor doesn’t show up until close the next day, and it’s John, not looking too much the worse for wear. Alan can’t help but look him over for injuries, even if he can’t touch. John looks fine, just angry. It’s almost a relief, because at least he’s feeling something about Alan.

“Scott, take a break,” he says, his eyes on John.

“Huh? Oh.”

Scott clears out, and it’s just the two of them, and it’s electric between them.

“You let my kid go into that.”

“Your kid is stronger than either of us will ever be. And I wasn’t going to watch you die.” Alan stares at him, hold his eyes, and scar tissue is a reminder to not let that injury happen again.

John’s the one who looks away first, swearing. “You can’t - that’s not okay. You can’t put me over my son. He’s my _son_ , goddammit.”

“I know that,” Alan snaps, because he does. He’s seen the way they love unconditionally and completely: Claudia had, too. Alan was just never on the inside, no matter how he felt about them.

John runs a hand down over his face. “He totalled Claudia’s Jeep, trying to get to me. Could have killed himself, too.”

Alan wants to reach for him to offer comfort, but it wouldn’t be welcome, he thinks. He’s been disciplined enough for long enough that he barely twitches forward. “You’re both okay, though?”

“Yeah,” he says, and sighs, and looks back at Alan. “You never called, after this summer.” His glance flicks down, at Alan’s mouth.

Alan blinks, and can’t hold onto the thread of the argument they were almost having. He’s an idiot. He laughs, and it sounds rusty with disuse. “I didn’t think to.”

John’s face falls, and Alan reaches forward finally finally to touch his hand. “I’m so used to the ball being in your court that it was unthinkable that it was in mine.” He takes a breath. “Want to get coffee?”

John smiles, and it’s shy and almost bashful, and Alan’s reminded of him when he was twenty. It makes him warm. John turns his hand and laces his fingers through Alan’s, a little awkwardly because they’re both stiff. “I think we’ve wasted enough time. I have a coffee-maker?”

“I’ve got a coffee-maker and no teenage son,” Alan counters, and John’s smile flashes bright.

“Sounds good.” They walk to the door hand in hand, and John stands close while Alan leaves a note on the door for Scott. The last light of the clear and cloudless sunset is fading, and John’s body heat is palpable. Alan pauses and closes his eyes and absorbs the moment, because he never thought he’d get to have this.

John runs a palm up the outside of his arm, and it would be a casual touch except for being the first time he’s ever done it. “I’ll meet you there?”

“Yeah,” Alan says, and gets in his car. He follows John to his house, partly because even though it’s John it still feels dangerous to pass a police cruiser.

They end up getting to the front steps about the same time, and Alan unlocks the door, then ushers John in first with a hand at the small of his back. There’s a thrum all under his skin, the slow-burn escalation of years coming slowly to a head.

Alan closes the door and locks it and turns to John, and they come together. Alan couldn’t say who moved first, only that they’re pressed chest to chest, too many layers between them, and they’re kissing. It’s soft, and almost tentative, and Alan doesn’t want anything to be tentative between them: he’s been sure of his feelings nearly twenty years. He brings up a hand to cup John’s face and change the angle a little, and the kiss goes hot and sweet.

John sighs into it, and wraps his arms around Alan. They stand there kissing for what seems like ages, until John swipes his tongue across Alan’s lip and reminds him viscerally that there are other things they could be doing.

He runs his hands down John’s chest, parting his top shirt, and then John gets the idea, and they’re in motion. “Where’s your bedroom?”

Dropping his head to John’s shoulder, Alan breathes deep. “This way.”

Alan leads, but they’re in each other’s personal space, unwilling to let too much distance spring up. They undress each other slowly in the last remnants of the light, and it makes his bedroom feel almost painfully intimate. They’re both wearing too many layers. Alan finally gets off John’s T-shirt, and runs his hands down his chest, admiring the contrast of their skin.

When John peels off his undershirt, it’s mostly an unwanted interruption in Alan’s regularly scheduled kissing and stroking, but then John’s gaze snags on something. He draws in a quiet breath, and Alan remembers belatedly that he carries some of his years on his skin, and not all of them are pretty. There’s a triskele carved over his heart, scarred in clean raised lines.

John meets his eyes, and Alan realizes that Claudia would have had a matching one. They kiss, and it’s weighted, and then John leans down to kiss the scar. Mouth still on his chest, John starts backing him towards the bed, and Alan goes more than willingly. He sits on the edge and puts his hand on John’s belt buckle and asks, “Are you sure?”

John smiles at him, and puts his hand on the side of Alan’s neck. “Yeah. You?”

“Yes,” he says simply, and undoes the belt. They get naked, and they get properly on Alan’s bed, and it’s so perfect it hurts. They kiss over and over until Alan’s dizzy with it, and John’s on top of him. They’re almost perfectly lined up, John’s erection on his hip, and Alan reaches down to adjust them. He rolls his hips up, and _yes_ , that, there.

John’s hips come down against his in perfect pressure as he pushes himself up on his forearms. “Is this how you want it?”

“Yeah,” he says. “There’s lube in the nightstand.”

John leans over, and that changes how they fit together, and it’s on the edge between nice and awkward until John comes back with lube and slicks them both. It’s cool, but John’s hand is warm, and the slide of their cocks against each other is addictive.

Alan comes first, spilling hot on both their stomachs, and is just getting painfully oversensitive when John comes, too, biting the side of Alan’s neck as he shudders above him. Alan strokes a hand down John’s back, then moves him to the side. They’re both going to feel disgusting fairly quickly. Alan wipes himself down perfunctorily and dampens a washcloth for John and fills the glass he keeps in the bathroom.

John looks a little lost, lying in the bed still getting his breath back, but the lost look goes away when Alan passes him the cloth, only a little above room temperature but apparently warm enough. When he’s done, Alan trades him the cloth for the glass, already half-empty, and throws the cloth in the laundry with the other one. John finishes the water and says, a little warily, “I’d like to stay the night, if that’s okay with you.”

“I’d like that,” Alan says, and gets on the bed with him. They get the sheet over them, because the quilt’s too much for a bed with the warmth of two people, and Alan takes John’s hand. He falls asleep wrapped in contentment.

*

He wakes tangled in John, and the soft morning light makes it feel dreamlike. Alan’s not equipped psychologically or emotionally to deal with how perfect it is, so he disentangles himself, pulls on sweatpants, and goes to start coffee.

John stumbles in a few minutes later in his boxers, and his hair’s a mess. He scratches his stomach and smiles, and Alan’s heart trips. “Coffee’ll be ready in a minute,” he says.

“Mm,” says John, coming up behind him. He wraps his arms around his waist and drops his chin on Alan’s shoulder. “Some things are worth waiting for.”


End file.
